There is an old slogan from the Fennoman independence movement. Swedes we are not, Russians we can never be, therefore Finns we must be. So slip on your smoking jacket, fill your pipe, take your first sip of your adult beverage, and sit back in your most comfortable chair. Welcome to todays offering from The Philatelist.
Todays stamp does a good job in telling the story of Kuula with just a picture. A very serious younger man of some class portrayed in a country setting. After all an areas natural culture arises from peasants in the countryside and then formalized by a more serious and educated upper class in the city.
Todays stamp is issue A356, a 30 Markka stamp issued by Finland on July 7th, 1983. The stamp celebrates the 100th anniversary of the birth of classical piano and choral composer Toivo Kuula. According to the Scott catalog, the single stamp issue is worth 40 cents used.
Toivo Kuula was born in Finland and studied under legendary Finnish composer Jean Sebelius. Though he had experience as a conductor and an unfinished symphony at the time of his early, unexpected death, he was most famous for his choral works that were usually accompanied by piano and perhaps a small string section.
The Finland of Kuula’s youth was a Grand Dutchy that pledged allegiance to Czarist Russia. The people still had many ties to neighboring Sweden including language. Rising up from the peasant class was a unique local culture and language that many hoped could form the basis for a new independent Finland that was free of both Russia and Sweden.
Part of this is a movement to make more formal the local peasant culture that often included stirring, patriotic, and romantic songs sung in local dialects around the campfire at the end of a hard days work in the fields. I recently did a Yugoslav stamp featuring Vuk Karadzic who was doing similar work in Serbia. See https://the-philatelist.com/2018/07/30/communist-yugoslavia-1950-sells-off-the-invalid-exile-stamps/ . Ataturk in Turkey was doing similar things. He went so far as to bring in Austrians to do classical arrangements of the Turkish peasant campfire songs. The challenge of course is to keep the passion and local flavor of the music intact as it is turned into something played in a opera house. According to the music critics of the day, Kuula pieces such as “The maiden and the Boyar’s son.” and “The sea-bathing maids” did a good job of this. Kuula’s teacher Sibelius famously said “Don’t listen to critics, they don’t make statues for critics”. He has a point and after listening to a few of the pieces I wonder if Kuula did a better job with titles than the music itself.
Kuula did not live to enjoy an independent Finland he was so in favor of. He was partying in a hotel on a Saints festival day when he was hit by a stray bullet fired from a group of nearby Jagers. Jagers were independence fighters that were Finns trained and funded by Germany as a way to shrink and weaken Russia. They were successful in breaking Finland off from chaotic revolutionary 1917 Russia and the soon after the collapse of Germany prevented Finland from becoming a German stooge. Interesting to me that Germany was behind the independence movement, I had detected some German influence in the music of Kuula as well. Why do locals so often get co-opted by outside forces?
Well my drink is empty. Come again for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting. First published in 2018.